MINI-BIOGRAPHY
1. Willie
Keith Kellogg was born on the 7th of April, 1860 in Battle Creek,
Michigan; he was the seventh of 16 children.
2. As a
young boy, Will Kellogg was extremely shy with no unique qualities; in fact his
teachers thought him to be a slow learner and in no time he dropped out of
school to help out as a salesman in his dad’s broom company.
3. In
1880, he married Ella Davis and also in that year, took up a 3 month business course at the Parsons Business College in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
4. After
the course, he gained employment as a bookkeeper at the Battle Creek Sanatorium
run by his elder brother, Dr John Harvey Kellogg.
5. Will
helped his brother to promote his many health books, recipes, theories and even manage his Sanitas Nut Food Company for several years but received very meagre wages for his effort.
6. In
1894, Will, whilst still a bookkeeper in Battle Creek, mistakenly left out a
pot of cooked wheat to stand overnight but found it severely hardened by the
morning. Out of curiosity, he then proceeded to run it as it was, through the
company’s rollers; to his surprise, each grain of wheat came out as a large,
thin flake. He then persuaded his brother to bake it and serve it with milk and
it eventually became a huge hit with all the patients.
7. Not
long after, patients who had left the sanatorium began requesting for the wheat
flakes by mail order and so Will had the added responsibility of meeting the
hundreds of orders that came in every week but he never missed a beat and
continued to expand the cereal business using his innate business acumen.
8. The
brothers combined forces and began experimenting with other possible raw
materials for making baked flakes such as barley, oats and corn. In 1898, they
discovered that corn grits produced a flavourful and crispy flake, thus the
cornflakes was born. Will however, insisted on the addition of sugar to this
new product to which John vehemently refused, thus causing the brothers to go
their separate ways.
9. In 1903,
Will formed his own cereal company called the Battle Creek Toasted Cornflake
Company and began to experiment extensively with different recipes to further
broaden his market size. He advertised heavily and made use of slogans and
catch-phrases that stuck easily in consumers’ minds; In New York, he proclaimed
Wednesday ‘the wink day’ whereby any woman who winked at their grocer on a
Wednesday received a free box of cornflakes.
10. In
1930, Will created the W.K Kellogg Foundation and its primary aim was to help children and youths attain their
aspirations by providing them with the resources they needed, to do so.
11. In
1934, Will donated more than $66 million to the Kellogg Foundation to further
ensure its sustainability and longevity.
12. In
1938, he retired from official duties and spent most of his retirement at his
Arabian horse farm in Pomona, California where he bred over 300 Arabian horses.
13. On 6
October 1951, Will Kellogg died at the age of 91, having being blind for the
last ten years of his life.
WILL KELLOGG QUOTE
